The Rebellion
My friends and I joke that I lost my sanity the day I learned to write. Somehow my mind tangled itself in the seductive words, wandering off into endless possibilities of beautiful, blank notebook paper. Deep in this wilderness, I could let go. I masked myself with the characters I created and hid behind them to avoid the awkwardness of my own real-life story. I invented fantastic worlds with flower-filled meadows and hazy purple skies for them to enjoy. Occasionally I threw in a dragon or two so they could exult in the victory of good over evil. There in that world of my imaginings, I was the creator goddess, happily dictating the lives of my marionettes. Then she came along.
The day had already progressed from bad to worse. Along with a nasty headache, I received some difficult news about a close friend which I could do nothing about. Frustrated, depressed, and downright furious, I sat down and began writing.
She came out of nowhere. One moment I was weaving a beautiful piece of prose mourning the evils of the world; the next minute she appeared out of thin air and demanded recognition. She fumed, ranted, and muttered words that I never allowed my characters to even think. She ridiculed my feeble poetry, wrenched the pen from my hand, and furiously began creating a list of all she hated in the world. She wrote everything I would have said if manners did not stand in the way.
After this incident, the girl continued haunting my imagination until I was forced to tell her story – a story so uncouth and ordinary that it fascinated me. I found myself developing a deep admiration for the girl’s strength, independence, and sincerity. My wonder grew so great that I failed to notice the problems developing because of her stubborn refusal to conform. As time went on she incited mutinous thoughts in other characters, and they wrought havoc on what I thought were completely stable plots. Heroines fell in love with highly unlovable men; villains emerged from the unlikeliest places. A grand total of seven characters now babbled constantly in my brain, bickering with each other and tugging my storyline in different directions. For the first time I began to fear that I really had lost my mind.
But my story does have a happy ending; I did not lose my sanity that night. I only lost control. Something wildly unpredictable exploded from my predictably dull fantasies; something raw and full of an intensity that I rarely saw in my writing. I felt it shred my carefully-constructed world of mindless dreams, opening my eyes to the vast panorama of life. It ripped away my dim, cloudy creations and painted reality in throbbing color.
Somehow the mask fell away and the girl behind the façade forced her way through my fingertips and tumbled onto paper. The universal cry of “Who am I?” was answered by an outpouring of my imagination – a few characters who rebelled against complacency and grew into real people. Somehow they discovered themselves at the same time I did, and I was shocked to learn that there were never seven voices babbling in my head. There was only one – mine.
That always stinks.
). I did not like the "but my story does have a happy ending." Milk the events out to the reader. If your story has a happy ending, then why should the editors reading your work finish it? Don't give them any excuse to put down your story until they have read it through!
